Sunday, December 21, 2003

BW.  Googling deep data.  The devil, as usual, is in the details. Google has decided that its customers should gather information through inputs of text search terms by using more or less the same simple interface to search for news, things to buy, or any other topic. That's a small but important distinction. Google assumes that customers are smart enough to learn to search with words rather than with the graphical and pull-down menus used by most of its competitors. That's an understandable bet. Google has gone from upstart to Internet star with a business plan based on that assumption.  NOTE:  I am more interested in a flexible set of tabs that doesn't force me to add strange operators.  For example, let me dump the Directory and "groups" tabs, I don't use them.  [John Robb's Weblog] 9:08:29 AM  comment []  Trackback []     Arthur C. Clarke. As WorldChanging often links to sites and stories which reflect the ideas and activities of younger people, it is worth noting that one of my heroes, a person whose ideas and values parallel those of WorldChanging, just turned 86 years... [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here] 8:59:25 AM  comment []  Trackback []     Doc Searls - It's the Story, Stupid. Seeing through slides. Scott Rosenberg: The single deadliest thing a speaker can do is read from his own slides. Agreed. It always exasperates me to see slides used as speakers notes rather than as helpful visual aids. Want to know how to give a good presentation with slides? Here's what I learned from two masters. It's more than a half-decade old, but its tips are no less useful. [The Doc Searls Weblog] I've used this before as part of teaching presentation skills to consultants. Blogging it now so I can find it again later. [McGee's Musings] 8:52:14 AM  comment []  Trackback []     Frank Rich: "The political establishment has been blindsided by the Internet's growing sophistication as a political tool -- and therefore blindsided by the Dean campaign -- much as the music industry establishment was by file sharing and the major movie studios were by The Blair Witch Project, the amateurish under-$100,000 movie that turned viral marketing on the Web into a financial mother lode." [Scripting News] 8:51:19 AM  comment []  Trackback []     New weblog - Abusable Technology. Coordination trifecta: Abusable Tech (Clay Shirky). To make a trilogy of places where the net’s coordination costs change the nature of collaboration, I add a link to Abusable Tech, a weblog devoted to chronicling abuse or misuse of security tools, to today’s earlier posts about Howard... [Many-to-Many] An all-star list of contributors to the new blog. There is an RSS feed , although I really, really, wish that the default out of Moveable Type was a full feed instead of the niggardly first 30 words or so. It's a design decision that appears rooted in old assumptions. [McGee's Musings] 6:06:03 AM  comment []  Trackback []     A Cylindrical Yuletide Heart Attack. Workaholic parents and a hectic December schedule combined to dictate that a fourteen-year-old boy was once asked to prepare and cook the family Christmas Cake. Drowning in a sea of uncertainty, the boy did the wisest thing possible, and telephoned his Gran. Armed with a 'secret' recipe, the freedom of access to the drinks cabinet dawned on him, and a creeping rictus grin spread slowly across his face as the light of inspiration burned in his eyes. Somewhere, Strauss' 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' (real audio) played in the background. Whatever had his parents had been thinking? They were asking for trouble. The facts become more than a little vague here... The real story, however, is the reception the resulting cake received. Not only were the boy's parents ecstatic with the result, but were beseiged for days with requests for the recipe from friends and guests alike. Even people with tenuous connection to the family mentioned having heard of the gastronomic monstrosity in question. Unwittingly, the lad had hewn a millstone for his own neck. Despite being no better than 'mediocre' at cooking most dishes, he has since been the 'designated baker' of Christmas cakes, both for the family and others, sometimes for pay (the cheap whore...), for well over twelve years. Experience and natural selection have honed the 'product' into something that, in a soft light, vaguely resembles the slightly uglier and calorifically-unchallenged second cousin of Perfection. I was that boy and, yes, this is that cake... [kuro5hin.org] 6:03:40 AM  comment []  Trackback []     the Official Kwanzaa Website http://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org/ "All about the holiday, its origins, its symbols, and its significance." [Neat New Stuff] 6:02:41 AM  comment []  Trackback []     Joy of Soup http://www.joyofsoup.com/ A soup recipe blog, with a recipe archive. [Neat New Stuff] 6:02:08 AM  comment []  Trackback []     Gamer Dad: Gaming with Children http://www.gamerdad.com/ "Game reviews from a parental perspective." Includes a holiday shopping guide, as well as articles, interviews, previews of upcoming releases, a message board, and more. [Neat New Stuff] 6:01:52 AM  comment []  Trackback []

© Copyright 2004 Gail Marsella. Last update: 1/1/2004; 2:23:49 PM.

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